The most recent American Heart Association (AHA) Guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) place strong emphasis on the need for high quality chest compressions and a reduced number of ventilations. Currently, both professional and lay rescuers generally do not have an exact method for providing the specific rate of chest compressions or ventilations per minute. Resuscitation rates are generally estimated by the rescuer based on their CPR instruction. Inaccurate compression and ventilatory rates caused by miscalculation, distraction, and fatigue often negatively affects the quality of CPR provided.
It would be advantageous to provide an apparatus that would generate visual, audible or visual and audible alerts to prompt rescuers to provide the proper rate of chest compressions and/or ventilations to a patient. It would be a further advantage if the apparatus included the proper rates for adult, child, and infant patients as well as the appropriate chest compression to ventilatory ratio based on the patients' age and the number of rescuers involved.